Kabbalist Karen Berg

Today, we enter into the lunar month of Taurus (the bull): the sign of strength, loyalty, beauty, and persistence. Over the next four weeks, we will all be able to have the fortitude to stay on top of the things that we believe in and to overcome those things that stop us from achieving our goals, which are what give us life, strength, and of course, the ability to grow. 

Today is a holiday known as “Tu B’Shvat”, which some people refer to as “The New Year of The Trees”. On this day we have a special opportunity, or cosmic opening to connect to that energy of trees and nature that enable them to grow against gravity, or the physical laws of the Universe.  Ultimately today we can connect to and receive these gifts of nature. 

In order to get the most out of this day I suggest we all do a visualization that can create the opening we need to transform any negativity we hold and carry deep inside of us.

This past Saturday evening I travelled with our teachers and staff to Hebron in the West Bank to the Cave of Macpelah just after we finished learning about Abraham's purchase of this cave for Sarah's resting place.

Join me for a few words of consciousness recorded there. 

I know some of us may be looking back now, wondering if we prayed the “right” way, and had the “best” consciousness during the year-defining days of Libra.

Even I turned to my son Michael at one point during the intense Yom Kippur prayers in Los Angeles, and said, “I’m an American, half the time when I say the prayers in Hebrew or Aramaic, I’m not sure I’m getting them right. Sometimes I wonder if I should just not say them at all, and speak my own words, and try to connect to my Creator in my way?

If I’m praying, but not saying the words right, am I really connecting?”

We have all experienced moments when the road our life is on feels monotonous and it seems we aren’t doing anything significant or that the work we are doing isn’t fulfilling.  When this is the case, it’s possible we are meant to be traveling down a different road.

I think these days many people are familiar with this stuck feeling.  I think that’s why I am so often asked, “How do I know what my potential is and, what does the Light want for me?”

Tonight and tomorrow is the time when we are supposed to immerse ourselves in the energy of Binah consciousness.  We have earned that right through these ten days of looking inside, of being more aware of our negativity and how it conceals our Light and how it hurts others.

Because of that, we have developed an energy that enables us to reach the level of Binah, in which there are no such things as mistakes – only consciousness.

The portion of the Bible that corresponds to this week says, “remember the rules and judgments of G-d,” and, “don’t think it is because of your righteousness…”
It is teaching that you can do nothing without the help of the Light. Don’t ever think that when you achieve something, or reach a successful place, that it was your power alone that got you there. Yes, you tried, yes you struggled, yes you had pain, but do you think you got there on your own?